Absence
by EstelRaca
Summary: Den-O. SPOILERS through the end of the series. Airi dreams about him sometimes, the person they can't remember, the one they all grieve for in their own way. Some Airi/Sakurai. One-shot, character study.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Den-O. I just can't seem to stop writing about it.

**Author's Note:** Not much to say on this one. Some speculation, but not too much. Some Airi/Sakurai, and perhaps some Airi/Yuuto, though not too much. Hope people enjoy! Comments always appreciated.

_Absence_

Something important is missing.

She knows it, deep in her heart, deep in her mind, a quiet, haunting ache of longing and sorrow.

It isn't a harsh pain. There is no sharpness to it. No anger. No guilt. No misdirected, frantic energy struggling to escape, as in the months just after their parents were ripped from them.

It is an old loss. An old sorrow, an accepted sorrow, the years-dulled ache of a loved one gone peacefully, quietly into the night, knowing rage would bring nothing but extra pain. It wouldn't bother her, if only she knew who or what it was for.

She dreams, sometimes. She can never remember them, not clearly, but she knows when they happen. When she wakes crying, quietly, gently, and there is a tingle in her arms, a warmth against her chest, and the strangest sounds still ringing faintly in her ears. The clatter of a train. The thrumming of a crossbow. The mooing of a cow.

The ticking of a clock.

Over and over, the unstoppable, untouchable, unfeeling ticking of a clock.

"Ryou-chan…"

He looks up from his dinner at her, eyes wide, expression worried, and she smiles to reassure him. He is always like this now, careful and concerned around her, _about_ her, and she can understand it a bit. Somewhere along the line her baby brother fought a war while also taming his inhuman comrades, and it has left an indelible stamp on him.

But he doesn't need to be worried about her. He doesn't need to look at her like that, as though she will break.

"Nee-san?"

But she did break. It is maddening, to see it in her memory, to know that she spent months disconnected from all that was happening and to have no idea _why_.

To know her brother fought, again and again, without her noticing, without her there to provide support.

"What was it that we lost, Ryou?"

He doesn't say anything, eyes darting to the telescope that dominates the center of the shop. There is no reason for him to stare at it so fixedly, so pointedly, so hauntingly, as though it is the epicenter of their universe. It has been there for years, a good-luck gift from friends when they first reopened the shop, and it has nothing to do with the hole that exists in their life.

Except that, looking at it again, following his gaze, she thinks she hears the soft ticking of a somber clock.

"I don't know, nee-san." He turns his gaze back to her, and she recognizes the look in his eyes. It is sorrow, accepted but not understood, tempered and worn but not erased by time.

She moves to his side, gathering him into her arms as though he were younger, as though he were still the baby brother she could shelter from the world. For a moment he merely sits there, surprised, uncertain; then he hugs her back, fierce and unrestrained.

"I'm so sorry, Ryou-chan. This must have been so hard for you." She releases him, taking a step back but keeping hold of his hand. "You've done so much."

"You have, too." The earnestness in his voice surprises her. He means what he says. "I can't tell you exactly what we lost or what we did. But I know you helped me. Helped us. That without you, the world wouldn't have had a chance."

She smiles at him, brushing a lock of hair off his face and behind an ear. She hopes it's true—feels it's true, somehow, though she has no memory of helping them.

Just the faint, terrible ticking of a clock… or a pocketwatch.

Her eyes have moved to the telescope again, and she approaches it slowly. There is something about it, something about the memory of how she received it, that doesn't seem quite right. Or that is right, is true, but isn't the whole truth. As though there were something else there, some other memory, hazy and lost but important…

"Onee-chan, don't be sad."

He puts his hand on her shoulder gently, high-strung energy sheathed behind shyness as he looks at her with his own eyes from Ryou's face. Even before, in the time when she was broken and maybe grieving for the thing she can't remember, she recognized that _this_ one wasn't her little brother. "I'm not sad, Ryuu-chan. At least, not much. Not in a bad way."

She has to explain it to him then, the concept of grief and healing and remembering sorrow to remember joy. It isn't something that comes naturally to the Imajin, and this one is a child still, though a child changed and matured by the battles he has seen. He tries to listen, but there are too many fascinating things in the world, from her new attempts at coffee to the birds on the windowsill to the kids in the street, and he is gone before ten minutes have passed, hugging her exuberantly before bouncing out the door.

She sighs, and smiles, and wishes him good luck too late for him to hear. Having the young Imajin is like having another little brother—a troublesome, overpowered little brother, but she finds that she loves him.

Loves all of the Imajin, because Ryou loves them and because they cared for him when she couldn't.

She doesn't ask him about the hole in their lives again. It hurts him, and if he knows anything more he doesn't want to tell her. Besides, there are times she almost forgets.

When she has Ryou with her, and he has his Imajin with him.

When she's working, pouring all of her energy into developing new flavors, new tastes.

When her erstwhile suitors stumble all over each other, and she would feel bad for them, but it's not as though she's encouraging either one.

When Sakurai Yuuto comes and sits with Ryou, or comes and sits by himself, his moods ranging from somber sullenness to infectious delight.

He is another soldier in their mostly-finished war, and she somehow knew that even before Ryou told her. Had memories of a warrior in green, strong, self-confident, though she couldn't tell where in her life they were supposed to fit. She tries not to think on it too much, because the rewards aren't worth the headache and confusion that follow.

Besides, it isn't the soldier that she's grown attached to. Not the moody, solemn young man who wears his maturity like a defensive cloak, daring the world to try to break it. She is fond of him, respects him, but he doesn't warm her heart as much as the other one does.

The young man who dreams about stars, and laughs with an easy grace, and isn't self-conscious about what he is doing. She's never sure which face he will wear when he comes in, though they are slowly, steadily merging, and she likes to think that she and Ryou are helping him with that.

Today he sits by himself, elbows on the table, and his eyes are fixed on the telescope. She can't tell the exact emotions playing over his face, the nuances too subtle and varied, but she recognizes the general tone.

Grief, accepted but still sharp, and she can faintly hear the ticking of a clock, determined and unstoppable.

"Who was it?"

He looks up at her, face paling, and she wonders if it was the right thing to ask. But she needs to know, wants to know, and he may be the only one who can tell her.

"It was a person, wasn't it?" She sits next to him, looking from the young man to the telescope. "The one we all miss. The one we can't remember."

"Yes." He says the word as though it pains him, eyes unfocused. "_He_ was a person."

She doesn't say anything, watching Yuuto, waiting to see if he can say more. She won't hurt him, not to find answers to a question that maybe shouldn't be asked, but if he can… if he can…

"You were supposed to forget entirely." His hand traces over hers, lightly, before returning to the tabletop. "So was Ryou. So was I, maybe, but my past's already such a tangled mess…"

"Why?"

"Because one of us had to disappear. To never have really existed. And because he couldn't… my existence… because in the end he was good man like that." He turns away from her, eyes lowered. "He saved what he wanted to save. What he loved most in the world. You and Nogami and the future."

"I…" Remember, she wants to say, but she doesn't. Not really, not real events, not real images, but somewhere inside her dreams she has seen him. Has held him, and watched the stars with him, and loved him dearly.

And lost him to the ticking of a watch, steady and true.

"Don't cry." Yuuto takes her hand again, and the expression on his face is enough to dispel any tears. Part earnest concern, part panicked adolescent, all Yuuto.

"I'm not going to cry." Wiping at her eyes with her free hand, she squeezes his fingers gently. "I know we all did what we had to do. Just… could you tell me about him?"

"Ah…" The young man shifts away from her, and for a moment she is afraid he is going to retreat back under his mask of stoic detachment.

Then his expression softens, just slightly, and she nods in encouragement.

"He was a strange man. A determined man." Yuuto's eyes drop from hers, moving back to the telescope. "Not much scared him."

"You said he loved us. Ryou and I." She says each word carefully, willing her voice not to break, her tone not to betray how strangely, irrationally important that one point is.

"He did. More than anything else in the universe, he did." He looks at her again, and she can't read the expression on his face. "You and him… you came up with a plan to save the world. And you made it work."

"I helped him?" Her voice shakes a little, despite her best efforts, because this, too, is important in a way she can't understand.

"You helped him." His smile is so sad, so heartbreaking, but she can't help him like she would Ryou. "You sacrificed… a lot. More than you can ever know."

"I think we all did." She holds his hand gently still, because he is shaking. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

The words are automatic, sharper than he probably intended them to be. The look that crosses his face as he realizes it is priceless, and she can't help a soft laugh. He hesitates, and then laughs along with her.

"I really am fine. It's just… it's complicated. My memory, my past, it keeps getting… changed. Rewritten. But I still remember bits of other ways things went, maybe because of Zero-liner, and… it's hard, sometimes. Digging around inside the paradoxes for things."

"Paradox…" Remembering things that never happened. Grieving for a man who never existed. "I understand. Ryou does, too, I think."

"Ah. Maybe. Probably." He draws his hand away from hers, suddenly self-conscious again.

"Let me get you some coffee, Yuuto." She touches his shoulder as she stands, catches his reaction in her peripheral vision as she walks away, and it makes her smile. She really is very fond of him, this newest addition to their family.

He doesn't look at her when she comes back, eyes fixed on a box that he is turning over and over in his hands. He waits until she sets the coffee down before shoving it toward her. "Here."

Smiling yet again, she takes the small box. "Thank you, Yuuto."

The smile dissolves when she sees what lies nestled inside the package. A watch, beautiful silver, and there are words carved on the back. English words, but she knows most of them already, though she doesn't know from where, the faint haze of paradox coating the memories.

"It's his saying. This one." Yuuto points to the sentence stretching around the bottom half of the circle. "_The past should give us hope._ He… would have wanted you to have that. This part… I added."

It takes her a moment to work out the foreign word, to parse it into the sentence encircling the top of the watch, a mirror to the sentence beneath. "_The future should give us hope?_"

"Yeah." He looks to her left, to her right, anywhere but at her face, and he's blushing furiously. "I know… you probably think it's dumb… but—"

"I think it's right. I think they're _both_ right." She takes his hand again, and he looks up at her, at once both so young and so old.

She doesn't think about leaning down to kiss him on the forehead. It is an instinctive action, and one she doesn't regret.

"Thank you. For everything you've done, and for this." She tightens her hand around his once more before letting go. "Thank you."

He doesn't say anything, hands snaking out to grab his coffee cup. The gulp he takes scalds his mouth and he jerks back, spilling coffee on the table, on himself, on the floor.

She doesn't mind. It gives her an excuse to stay by his side longer, to talk with him more, because she really is getting very, very fond of the strange young man.

She still dreams of him, the man who never was, and sometimes wakes with a tingle in her arms and tears on her cheeks and the old ache of sorrow in her throat. But those nights grow steadily less frequent, the hole in their lives steadily less obvious, and that is a bittersweet relief.

The watch she keeps by her side, and even when she forgets to wind it she can still hear it, the steady, unstoppable, untamable, beautiful and kind and cruel ticking of time.

Hope, for the past and the future and the present.


End file.
